


Shadows Settle On The Place That You Left

by ThisEndingIsTheBeginningOfMe



Category: The Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Character Analysis, Character Study, F/M, If it’s good enough for Grammarly it’s good enough for you, M/M, No Dialogue, Ot3 for life but just will and Jem this time around, Parabatai Bond, Relationship Study, okay like one line, parabatai bonds should have been explored more !!, wessa Tag just cuz cannon compliment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27975610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisEndingIsTheBeginningOfMe/pseuds/ThisEndingIsTheBeginningOfMe
Summary: Willam Herondale did not believe he was half of anything. He did not believe human beings were born malformed and yearning for something they did not already have. So when he found his whole fit together so perfectly with another’s it might as well be a half he  failed to resist the beautiful temptation. He took his dying savior, held on tight and hoped for the best.Wherein Will is reviewing his life in old age through journaling and finds he isn’t over quite as much as he wished he was
Relationships: Jem Carstairs & Will Herondale, Jem Carstairs/Tessa Gray/Will Herondale, Jem Carstairs/Will Herondale, Tessa Gray/Will Herondale
Kudos: 9





	Shadows Settle On The Place That You Left

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure:  
> 1: I wrote this after finishing TID I haven’t read any of the new material and probably don’t plan to unless all of them can be together again (lol) so if any of this contradicts some newer stuff I’m sorry 
> 
> 2: I wrote this for pure feelings so I didn’t pay all that much attention to plot details so If it seems weird that why. I wrote it just to get across how I imagine Will could feel I wasn’t really focused on anything else so If that kinda thing bothers you sorry 
> 
> (p.s. the song is Youth by Daughter)

August 3rd 1893 

I, Willam Owen Herondale, have lived an unbelievably happy life. I am lucky beyond my years for all the things life has gifted me. In the late years of my life, I reflect on my youth and all the wrong I felt had been done to me, all the blessings I’ve had bestowed on me. Every day my wife stays with me, a gift in of itself. I have taken the time to be grateful for every gift so I only find it fair to give an equal amount of time to the pain. 

Looking back on my life, it has come to my attention that, in many ways, my teenage years defined my life. Yet, I know, more than most, the despair of those years; the hopelessness, the guilt, and the fear, unrelenting and constant. I now realize that young man— still more boy than anything, never had the chance to heal.

Once I was past those years I never looked back. I didn’t want to heal him, I didn’t think he was worthy of healing. I had a life, I had a family I was past him. whoever that arrogant little bastard was he wasn’t worthy of the life he was about to be given. 

Only once I started writing these letters did I realize how angry I still am about things decades in the past, things I ought to be over or at least not as bloody enraged as I was in my youth. I found the wounds fresh and bleeding still as if I were 17 again. It was jarring, to say the least never mind the fact I had thought I lost that passion years ago. 

A theme that has arisen in my reflection of my youth is anger; toward myself at what I didn’t do, at things, I did know and did nothing about. 

I have found I continue to be angry,   
For him, For who he never had the chance to become.   
I am perpetually mad at who my James has forever not to be. 

I am mad I didn’t notice how Jem’s Imminent demise weighed on him, how I only chose to see him as a pentacle of perfection for me to admire. 

I expected a child who was dying to lead me to the light at the cost of his life. I am mad because I still feel guilty. 

I am mad for what I always knew to be true,   
Jem never had enough time. My Jem, holding forever in his palms, still doesn’t have time.

Once upon a story, I would have thought myself done with being upset at the way our lives turned out. I still think for the most part I have healed the man who lost his other half, so to speak. A part of me will always feel wronged for Jem but I thought I was past the point where I could barely breathe knowing how it all turned out for us. 

I am hardly alone in the absence Jem left in my life.   
On the contrary, My Tessa and I have often talked of the hole Jem left in our lives, especially in the beginning. 

Nevertheless, We’d be naive to think either of us could fill the Jem shaped hole in the other hearts and we knew better than to try. We offered what comfort we could to each other but it would never replace the man himself or what closure with him could offer. 

With this in mind, I believe I will never rid myself of the thought... 

I am mad because I lost him, 

That’s what most of it shakes down to.   
Whatever other pains that kept me awake at night in my youth healed themselves with time but this particular wound oozes perpetual pain and refuses to stop. 

I spent all of our time together preparing to lose him to death and I didn’t. It’s a different kind of pain entirely.   
To have him alive is all I could have wished for and every year I lose more and more of him to the Brotherhoods Influence. 

I am mad because I was a whole with him and I didn’t know it until being by my self felt like being cleaved in half. 

If I knew...if that selfish little bastard knew that he’d lose me to old age before I lost him...

What would I have done?

Will wrote, rewrote, and scratched out because he didn’t care how long it took him. He would write it down, If he could admit it no one else He could admit on the page. 

How can you even begin to put a name to something that never happened? 

To something that only breathed in the recesses of your mind on your boldest nights, That only moved and swayed in that part of your brain that dealt with hypotheticals, With maybes. 

For the purpose of discussion I will put a name to it. 

When you’re young you keep an eye on the bodies around you; The way they breathe and lean and fall.   
And on your bold nights, you bring those mental pictures up at night and let thoughts flow

Whether they be good or bad or downright cruel. 

On these same bold nights   
If a particular bend of flesh catches a fire in you   
You let your mind's eye burn holes in the image;   
For a second longer than you can justify to yourself,   
because on these nights it only seems fair to deny yourself nothing. 

Bold nights as such promote a kind of hedonism Other nights do not. As you linger self-indulgence overrides until you fold and let your mind's eye take you elsewhere, with just you and this bold nights beauty. 

These perfunctory scenarios seem to live in a world entirely separate from our own. It is easy to separate from any real memories you have of the person.   
You let your mind run wild With this person, imaginary and gone as soon as you bore, completely at your disposal. Having to be fully aware this person very well exists in your real world. 

Just for this night let your hands roam a blank canvas   
And if your mind draws a blank at what to do than there is no better night to laugh it away than bold nights. 

I explain this long convoluted human experience to say that once upon a time this happened to me, the anomaly being…

it happened in the waking world. 

~~~~~~~~  
September 25th 1876 

A familiar scene presents itself, two young men—  
Boys in all the ways it matters, sit in a decidedly plain room. Will had to give it to Jem, there was just enough carefully placed clutter to almost make it seem as if he wasn’t as meticulous as Will knows him to be, not that he could. No, Will was much too busy brooding by the window to do such a thing. Jem determined to read his notebook with a look of deadly seriousness, Such a look didn’t suit him, no matter how much he did it. 

Will didn’t know why he was here, he could stare out the window in his own room. There is just something indescribably hard about leaving Jem’s room at the end of the night. 

Will moves his attention away from the window and to Jem, he doesn’t flinch under Will’s gaze, Maybe he doesn’t even notice. 

There is something about that, sitting in a room together dimly lit by candlelight completely comfortable and aware of the other. It’s that comfortable that feels like forever. Flickering candlelight casting shadows on Jem’s face in a way so familiar Will is sure this moment could have happened a thousand times, it’s that feeling that makes Will stare at Jem because in moments of forever this is allowed. 

Will took this moment of forever to think. 

Willam Herondale did not believe he was half of anything. He did not believe human beings were born malformed and yearning for something they did not already have. So when he found his whole fit together so perfectly with another’s it might as well be a half,   
So when the contentment of being whole with another bleed into him…

He felt guilty.

Will Herondale adores Jem Carstairs In every sense of the word and some days it hurts to look at him. It is hard to look into the eyes that have only shown you kindness, see the result of their withering away, and knowing you aren't entirely without blame. 

How can you speak to the other half of your soul, say “mine” and in the same breath be content with their dying? 

Which is what Will must be, content.   
Because he’s still here. He still lets Jem see every jagged piece of his heart, he still calls Jem his and finds comfort and knowing he’s Jem’s. He still tied his eternal soul to Jem and doesn’t regret it at all. 

On nights he never speaks of, when guilt and shame tear him apart, he is glad for the parabati bond because at least if he loses Jem at least he will have the right to grieve as he wants. 

To grieve as if he has lost the better half of him. 

He is glad because bodies are finite pieces of flesh and though he is doomed to lose Jem in body he can keep him in spirit always. 

Until the end of time the names Will and Jem will be intertwined, Foxes chasing each other's tails in an endless loop of painful adoration. 

Will was glad and he was guilty.   
For the longest time, Will was sure it couldn’t be true the more time he spent with Jem the more he felt it an irredeemable crime what the universe had doomed him to. 

Will still wouldn’t believe it if he didn’t see the result of it every day. 

Most days of the week Will can’t find it in himself to be mad at Jems coloring. 

He still remembers the little boy with charcoal black hair and dark brown eyes, sick and dying and resigned to it. 

But if it takes graying too soon, skin too pale for his heritage and eyes made of starlight to keep James by his side than Will won’t only take it; he’ll cherish it, He’ll memorize the kaleidoscope of gray that makes up his best friend, his parabati, his life.   
He’ll ring it for every drop of silver it’s worth and when it’s gone he’ll miss the metallic taste.

Will can feel eyes moving over him, He keeps his eyes glued to the floor. Even on the worst of days, Jem could read him like an open book and he knows Jem would want no part in the pity party Will was throwing himself. 

Will wishes to protect Jem like a ribcage does a heart. Rigid and unyielding in its effort to protect its better half. 

The longing to do, To act, on the protectiveness that was eating at him screamed to get closer to Jem but Will defiantly refused. 

“Or even just look him in the eyes,” the longing placated. Those gray eyes Will has grown so used to the privilege to look into. If nothing else Will wants to remember those eyes for the rest of his life. Like nothing else he’d ever seen. 

This was enough for him to give in;   
Will raised his eyes to watch him,  
Jem worked steadily at the book in his lap. 

Feeling eyes on him Jem slowly met his gaze and they just looked at each other for a second before Jem returned his eyes to his book. 

It didn’t take Will long to realize his mistake. 

Looking isn’t enough now, if looking had ever been enough Will wouldn’t be where he is right now. If Will could content himself with wondering what kind of person James Carstairs was he’d be a very different creature. 

Will's fingers burn to touch him, to feel him, hear his heart pumping in his chest. 

He itches with it, his parabati rune seems to be alight with the need to listen to his instincts 

Will keeps his eyes trained on Jem until the moment Jem meets his eyes again. 

“Do you want to spar?”   
Jem is surprised but agrees. 

Jem makes light conversation on the way over, Will can barely think with the need to get there. He doesn’t rise to the bait of the few years of shadow hunting experience Jem has on him. 

When they get to the sparing room and Jem picks a weapon The glint on his cheekbone is like moonlight. 

Only during the act of sparing is Will sure that Jem was the one he shared a soul with. 

The rightness that sings in his bones when they move in tandem together is nothing less than biblical. 

With the both of them feeling the blunt force of that sweet song, sprawled shoulder to shoulder feeling as together as you ever could after a good fight. 

Will got the irresistible urge for more   
As close as they were he wanted them to be closer. 

He wanted all of a sudden for them to share lungs, To breathe the same air, out of one's mouth and into the other. 

He wanted them to share a heart, Or no. 

It’s so hard to put a name on desires as new as these, Barely formed things, No time at all for refinement. 

He wishes to plunge his hand into Jem’s chest, hold a fragile thing, and feel it yield to him. 

He wishes to feel all that is keeping Jem  
Just as he is, living and with Will right up against him. 

There is no right way to express this   
The closest he can think of does not even cover the half of it. 

Will just moves, He hasn’t the faintest what could convey an emotion like that but anything is better than sitting there absolutely helpless. 

So when Will’s lip grazes Jem’s he freezes in his spot,  
Jem poised as ever doesn’t make a move. 

So they are stuck in a standstill, noses almost touching. 

The hot breath coming from Jem’s lips hits Will and with a weird sense of clarity that makes him do something horrible...think.

With just one thought he concluded that this was the worst idea he’d ever had. 

Willam Herondale was not short on his list of bad ideas. He had thousands of them, Millions of them, he was sure. Yet, none of them seemed worse than this one at that very moment. Could you even call it a ‘thought’ if it was this stupid, Did it even deserve the title? 

Will could imagine the embarrassment for years to come, Jem couldn’t leave him, wouldn’t even say a thing If he knew it would embarrass Will, but Will would know. 

They would both know what they weren’t talking about. 

The worst.   
The worst idea eve-

With absolutely no where to look but Jem he found all thought fell away again and all of it seemed so unimportant over the need to get so impossibly close 

So when gray eyes call to Will like moth to flame to get closer, to touch and be touched he can’t deny them.   
He couldn’t deny them anything. 

If they asked for the stars he would find a way to do it, he’d find a hundred ways and get a hundred different stars.

If those eyes asked… he would  
And he did. 

Weirdly enough as soon as hot mouth meets soft lips Will feels as though he can’t breathe in the best way. 

He wishes to never have oxygen touch him as Jem’s lips do right now if this is what suffocating feels like.  
~~~~~~~

It might as well have been a dream for that all it mattered in the end, In changing either of our fates. 

I am still sitting at my desk lit by candlelight, My bed warmed with the body of my wife. The snores of our children filling the house, The moon of the early morning hanging low in the sky. 

And him not nearly as close as I planned to keep him. 

Will sits back and looks at the page, A night he was never sure even happened. Will gave a sigh that was full of years of unresolved feeling. He wrote on...

We were right enough in thinking we were whole. We were and continue to be whole but what I didn’t know then was that once a whole becomes half of another whole it matters not what it began as Because as soon as it loses its other half it is broken. It is in that way born yearning and malformed yet fully whole. 

He can’t help but laugh as sure as his face aches for it, He writes nonetheless. 

Whole and yet entirely broken.

In the one tear that slides down wrinkled skin holds every good and pure moment of joy Willam Herondale had ever shared with James Carstairs.


End file.
